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"California site for 'maternity tourists' shut down
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EmailPrint..By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON and CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press
Raquel Maria Dillon And Christina Hoag, Associated Press – Thu Mar 24, 7:25
pm ET
SAN GABRIEL, Calif. – For months, neighbors noticed a number of pregnant
Asian women coming and going at all hours at an upscale townhouse
development in suburban Los Angeles.
They finally found out the home was being used as a maternity center for
Chinese mothers paying thousands of dollars to give birth in the United
States so their children would automatically gain citizenship, city
officials said.
The discovery of the center where women stayed before and after delivering
their babies at local hospitals was unusual and a possible sign that
birthright citizenship is being exploited as a lucrative business, an
immigration activist said.
"What this could suggest is ... they're taking it to the next step," said
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies,
which advocates stricter limits on immigration. "Whoever is organizing this
type of operation is buying or leasing a home to become a clearing house.
That's a serious problem."
But it's not illegal.
Women from other countries have long traveled to the U.S. legally on tourist
or student visas and given birth because U.S. law automatically entitles
children born on U.S. soil to citizenship.
While some stay under the false assumption that they too can gain
citizenship if their child is U.S.-born, many return to their home countries
convinced a U.S. birth certificate will afford their child more
opportunities in the future.
Often, the women are wealthy and able to pay the steep costs of the trip and
medical care.
Krikorian noted that some travel agencies abroad are known to arrange such
trips for individuals but not to specialized clinics such as the one in San
Gabriel.
Officials in the suburb that's home to a large Asian population shut down
the house for building code violations earlier this month after receiving a
complaint about excessive noise, overcrowding and possible building permit
violations, said Clayton A. Anderson, the city's neighborhood improvement
services manager.
Inspectors found seven newborns being kept in clear plastic bassinets in a
kitchen converted to a nursery.
"There was a woman there who said she was a nurse but she kind of scrambled
away when we got there," Anderson said.
Just two mothers answered their bedroom doors when inspectors visited, he
said. They told inspectors that they were Chinese and Taiwanese nationals
and spoke little English. Other mothers were out shopping.
The mothers told officials their families had paid to send them to the
United States to give birth, Anderson said. He did not know how much the
trips had cost.
After being interviewed by county child welfare workers, the women and
babies were taken to another location since the townhomes were deemed unsafe
for occupancy because structural walls had been breached.
The three homes, part of a five-unit condo development on a quiet
residential street, had adjoining inside walls removed, and rooms were
divided so mothers had separate spaces, Anderson said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not plan to investigate because the
case did not involve fraudulently obtained visas, agency spokeswoman
Virginia Kice said.
Republican lawmakers have moved to limit automatic citizenship for children
born in the U.S. Earlier this year they said they hoped to trigger a Supreme
Court review of the Constitution's 14th Amendment or force Congress to take
action with legislation they drafted on the issue.
Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King sponsored a bill that would limit automatic
citizenship to people with at least one parent who is a citizen, a legal
permanent resident or served in the military, but there has been little
movement on the legislation since it was introduced.
Some states, too, have tried to take steps to limit birthright citizenship.
Last week, Arizona's state Senate rejected illegal immigration bills that
included measures intended to produce a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on who is
entitled to U.S. citizenship at birth under the 14th Amendment.
Rep. Judy Chu, a Democrat who represents El Monte in Southern California,
said traveling to this country to give birth is not a common practice and
defended automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S.
"The 14th Amendment is fundamental to the U.S. and too important to change
because of the practice of a few," she said. "It would be a severe
disservice to our nation if millions of immigrants are painted with the same
brush."
Chapman University law professor Maria Cianciarulo, who specializes in
immigration, said she's never heard of a specialized maternity house, noting
that birthing tourism is a tiny fraction of the flow of immigrants and
tourists into the United States.
Workers at the San Gabriel house were busy Thursday restoring it to its
original state as ordered by the city.
Property manager Dwight Chang was fined $800 for construction without a
permit and operating a business in a residential zone. He told city
officials that he had rented the townhomes to a woman. A phone message left
at Chang's business, Ta Way Development in Arcadia, was not immediately
returned.
Neighbor Yolanda Alvarez said she was suspicious after noticing so many
pregnant women at the home.
"Different faces every day, but they were all Asian. They were all the same
size, with big bellies," Alvarez said. "I asked them at one point, `Sisters?
Family?' and they said, `No English.'"
Another neighbor William Padgett said the noise from cars in the middle of
the night bothered a lot of residents. "I knew something from the get-go was
going on," he said. "There was a lot of coming and going."
Mayor David Gutierrez said he understood why some foreign citizens would
wish to have their children in the U.S.
"They should certainly be commended for looking at the future welfare of
their children but we need to be very careful that as a result it doesn't
impact services and quality of life that we provide for U.S. residents," he
said.
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